JeffB

I’ll assume this is a serious question. INN believes in positive engagement talking to people not at people . They engage from within not from without.

So the first thing they would say is Jews don’t need a mechanism to get justice. Jews are the ones creating the injustice in Israel. The mechanism to stop the injustice is to decide to stop being unjust. That is INN approaches the I/P conflict from the perspective that they are tangential participants not outsiders. Their discussions with the Jewish community (including Israel) come from a place inside that community not outside it .

INN: We, us, our… what we did
JVP: Them, their… what Zionist did

They want the American Jewish community (and to some extent the global Jewish community) to start having serious conversations about Israel’s behavior in a Jewish ethical context. They approach American Jews and say when “we (note the “we” here) support things like the Gaza shooting look who are allies are, look who is objecting. Do you really feel comfortable on that side? Are you really telling me you are comfortable being someone who works to facilitate shooting demonstrating teens in the back?” They consider the occupation to be a crisis of conscience not a foreign policy crisis.

American Jewish organizations in an open and public way attacked the Netanyahu administration’s handling of the Kotel. American Jewish organizations in an open and public way have for years attacked various policies of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate with respect to conversions. American Jewish organizations have been able to bring pressure to bear on issues where the Israeli public mostly sides with taking a very hard line. They see no reason why a similar thing couldn’t happen with respect to the occupation, providing American Jews decided they oppose the occupation.

They want a positive message not BDS’s entirely negative message: “freedom and dignity for all Israelis and Palestinians… flourishing, joyous, liberated Jewish community that actively supports the dignity of all people.” They agree with Phil’s position that as long as American Jews support Israel, America will support Israel. They will not fight the American Jewish community nor try and bypass them. Instead they talk to them.

But not divided on the role of ethnicity – or, if they were, the ones who wanted Israel to be a state of all its citizens – names that come to mind are Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, and Judah Magnes – lost

Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein weren’t Israelis. But absolutely Israelis have been divided on the role of ethnicity and citizenship all throughout history. Just to pick a few examples that are current debates there are Russian Christians which Shas party is extremely hostile to while the rest of Israel’s society is rather welcoming. The Labor party’s ethnic attitude towards Mizrahi Jews is one of the biggest reasons for Israel’s shift to the right. Early Zionists hadn’t really considered the role of Mizrahi Jews when the Palestinians started their attacks against the Jewish population in the 1920s they drove Mizrahi indigenous Jews (and Ottoman religious immigrants) into the arms of the Zionists. Zionism then had to address this issue. There was a similar issue in the 1950s when the Arab countries expelled their Jewish populations.

Similarly on the Palestinians die. Circassians were originally classified as being Palestinians but have had their legal status changed and now serve in military sensitive roles. Something similar to what had happened to Druze earlier though mostly in the prestate days. The Israelis are trying to engage in something similar with ethnic Palestinian Christians.

Part of what Zionists complain about when they talk about the demonization of Israel is a tendency to not look at actual policy and make blanket untrue statements about Israel. The reason you thought Israel has this blanket discriminatory policy is because you are getting your news about Israel from antizionist sources which almost always oversimplify and often simply lie about Israeli policy. Israeli ethnic politics in the real world are complex and nuanced dealing with all sorts of subgroups that have their own opinions and trends. The actual situation bears little resemblance to the version you are going to hear in leftist propaganda about “Jews” and “Palestinians”.

There is to this day no such thing as Israeli nationality.

Of course there is an Israeli nationality. That’s the nationality of the citizens of Israel, quite a lot of non-citizens in the area broadly influenced by Israel and broadly many children of expats. I think what you probably mean is that the courts have been unwilling to recognize an Israeli nation for legal purposes. To contradict your point above this is an active area of debate. There most certainly area members of the Knesset today that support the creation of an Israeli nationality which would allow Muslims willing to be loyal to Israel but who don’t want to convert to have higher obligations (military service) and greater privileges (no housing discrimination).

In general though this is an area where the Western Left is simply intolerant. Israel is populated almost entirely from people whose origins were Byzantine (Orthodox Christians and Muslims) not the Western Roman Empire (Latin Rite Catholics and later Protestants). The West went through an evolution on the concept of nationality and state that the east didn’t. There are lots of issues in the Israeli / Palestinian conflict liking the Western European definition of nation instead of the Byzantine one is not one of them. Everyone involved in the conflict agrees with the Byzantine concepts and not the Western European concepts. A lot of your theology about religion and state are a product of the Reformation and the French Revolution. When you are dealing with Israel you are dealing with people for whom the Reformation and reactions to it are not part of their cultural heritage. In Eastern Europe the church and the state are still comfortably unified. Your choice of church is essentially a product of your ethnicity not your theology. A person is Greek Orthodox vs. Russian Orthodox because he’s Greek not because he holds that one does not need to take confession before every communion.

If you talked to a typical Israeli they don’t even have the cultural background to even understand what you as a westerner mean by “separation of church and state” or how you were using “Israeli national” above. Their concept of both “state” and “religion” are too different from your concept of those terms. Israel really is a foreign country. I’ve never been able to understand why western leftists have so much trouble just accepting that Israelis aren’t westerners.

There is an easy way to avoid being called an antisemite. Stop using racial language towards them. “ghetto-israel”, ” lily-white ashkenazis” and fake history about nations. Shlomo Sand believes all nations are constructions, why apply his arguments to Jewish nations exclusively and not say France when the same argument would apply.

Mostly yeah the Palestinians have been a troublesome minority for the state of Israel. They have refused to live under Israeli law, sided with Israel’s enemies and been treated badly as they have violently rebelled. The Israelis have tried negotiation and compromise which mostly failed and they tried violence which is mostly successful, hence violence becomes the preferred method. Lots governments have problems with interior groups that are hostile. Generally one doesn’t find westerners expressing much hostility towards those governments especially ethnically. We just had an ethnic cleansing by Myanmar, yet western leftist were emotionally indifferent. Similarly right before that we’ve had several large scale ethnic cleansing by Sunni Muslims with Western Leftists being supportive. Iran and Russia are horrifically oppressive towards rebelling minorities and yet your group often supports them. I have yet to hear a good argument from leftists why they don’t just group Israel in with say the 100 or so countries that ethnicities problems and leave it at that. The passion in this particular case deserves explanation.

The two countries Israel has the most culturally in common with are Lebanon and Turkey. Look at the differences in language from western leftists towards those 3 cases.

He is quite explicit in the article on his definition of a non-Zionist state, “It means, that one is not in rejection of a democratic, secular state, a state that is not a “Jewish state”, but that accepts Jews as Jews, as it allows religious freedom, as it separates religion from state.“

Why would anybody who is opposed the the settler-colonialist project that is Zionism think that the Plantation of Ulster was laudable?

Anti-colonialists at this point rather randomly choose which races are “indigenous natives” and which are colonists. There doesn’t seem to be any set of consistent rules to it. South Africa was one of the best examples where many of the tribes supported were 13th century settlers. Of course many of the Palestinians are themselves recent settlers. So if you are asking me to pick which side in any particular anti colonialist venture you will find appealing and which you will find totally beyond the pale I have no idea. I don’t understand leftists racism.

That being said though the goal of anti-Zionism is to take the population that exists in Israel and overwhelm it with a bunch of Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians…

what does this departure from Zionism really mean in more practical terms? It means, that one is not in rejection of a democratic, secular state, a state that is not a “Jewish state”, but that accepts Jews as Jews, as it allows religious freedom, as it separates religion from state. That’s all.

That’s not all. Meretz supports a secular state. The discussion about which powers, including none at all, the Israeli state church should have occur entirely within a Zionist framework. The Status Quo Agreement (https://books.google.com/books?id=iVJR9UZnTVAC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58#v=onepage&q&f=false ) was an agreement reached because 1940s Zionists were divided on the role of religion. It is likely the majority of 1940s Zionists opposed any role for a state church but at the time simply didn’t want to fight that battle. The Israeli state doesn’t need a Jewish state church more than France’s move away from state Catholicism caused the state to cease to be French.

Anti-Zionism is a desire to destroy the Jewish nation, not a desire to reform the Jewish state in any way including religious relations. A series of political reforms which left the Jewish nation intact and secure while merely changing some laws would be a failure of anti-Zionism not its completion.

Let’s pick another example to make this easier. Ireland has for the last 150 years been slowly weakening their state church. One can support Catholic control of the education system, support the church’s influence or oppose either of those things without ceasing to be a supporter of the Irish Republic. The equivalent of an anti-Zionist would be someone who supported Cromwell’s policy of England conquest and the settlement in Ireland of a non-Catholic population. The equivalent of anti-Zionism is opposition to the Irish nation, not just opposition to particular state policies.

I suspect you are going to be sadly disappointed in Corbyn’s wrath. Momentum is a majority of Labor party primary voters, it is not a majority of MPs nor Labor Party voters. More importantly Momentum oriented MPs will a definitely minority within Commons. Corbyn needs to get majorities to pass his agenda regardless of whether he is PM or not. The whole antisemitism thing is a symptom of the bigger problem for Corbyn that the Blairite Labor party does not agree with Corbyn’s policies and are not going to want to see them enacted into law. If he tries to govern the way he has led all that happens, even with the title of PM, is bill after bill just gets voted down and potentially other legislation takes its place. Corbyn to get policies through either needs to compromise or horse trade. He can only compromise or horse trade to his right. The enthusiasm for Momentum will fall off as Corbyn ends up passing bills far to the right of what his supporters expect. The numbers just aren’t there for a strong Corbyn and will never be there. PM Corbyn needs to avoid all of:

1) A Blairite faction that negotiates and compromises with the Tories to pass alternatives to the official Labor Party agenda.
2) An outright party split.
3) Constant erosion as MPs and moderate Labor voters defect to the Tories.

#3 is the reason he can’t intimidate himself a majority. Deselection is a serious threat in an environment of a strong Conservative party. In a weaker environment the Conservative party will be actively recruiting Blairite MPs to switch. Unless the Blairites are in the Cabinet and actively making decisions what is he going to threaten them with?

Getting specific to Jews there is even less he can do. 75% of Jews are Tory. The remaining 1/4 mostly float between Labor and Lib-Dems with little attachment to either party. The purge you think is going to happen already happened a generation ago. An anti-Israel Tory PM combined with Corbyn would be threatening to Jews interests. Corbyn alone not so much.

Sure Corbyn can crack down on Jewish Friends of Labor and watch his Jewish support fall below 3%. If Labor has 3% or less Jewish voters are considering Labor, the view of Labor as an openly antisemetic party is going to be mainstream opinion. What Jewish Friends of Labor allege now the British public would be saying openly as simple fact after they are purged. There wouldn’t be a debate. This gets compounded because some of the public might would like having a mainstream antisemetic party. You better believe the Tories and Blairites are going to have lots of televised interviews with voters who talk about how much they love PM Corbyn and voted for him because he is finally standing up to and sticking it to the Jews. So Corbyn in your crackdown world is not going to be having subtle debates about when anti-Zionism turns into antisemitism like leftist like. The whole define antisemitism so narrowly that no actual person qualifies trick won’t work for a PM.

You think Corbyn doesn’t like the pressure now when the conversation is about antisemitism in Labor. He would like it far less when the conversation is Labor’s antisemitic platform and policy. The Daily Mail or the Sun writing about antisemetic incidents is trouble. Those are mean papers. But wait until in your crackdown world it the USA State Department in an official report. PM Corbyn likely will need to fight desperately to keep the problem at only the current level of heat. So sorry. Your revenge fantasy ain’t going to play out.

If anything I mostly suspect much the opposite happens. Momentum is where Corbyn is strongest. It is going to be far easier for him to moderate Momentum on Israel than to effectively do anything about British policy or politics on the issue. Corbyn will drag Momentum to the right, because he has to on Israel and many other issues.